Markets in Everything: Fashion Like

These hangers in a São Paulo store show in real-time the number of “likes” an outfit has received on the Facebook page of Brazilian fashion retailer C&A. I shudder to think how many likes my typical outfit would receive.

I read “hangars” and wondered if the store might be in a re-purposed building at an airport.

AlanMay 14, 2012 at 7:41 am

Or do the numbers show in real-time the number of “likes” an outfit has received from staff of Brazilian fashion retailer C&A?

Don’t worry about your number of likes: there is room in the world of fashion for those who want to signal that they are the kind of people who would reject a restaurant because the clientele is beautiful, people who would “wander through an orgy thinking only about marginal rates of return”.

John B. ChiltonMay 14, 2012 at 8:23 am

Alex, your remark about your own ensemble gives me an idea. What’s next in fashion — that we wear our complements. Instead of someone telling us “that’s a nice outfit you’re wearing” they’d use their phone to like. The number of likes would display on our outfit.

Why not use it to display to lowest possible price you can get the item for online plus say a 10% convenience fee for having it directly in front of you in the store?

CliffMay 14, 2012 at 10:05 pm

Because you couldn’t make a profit!

Mark ThorsonMay 14, 2012 at 10:38 pm

I read in the book How To Make Money Selling Meat that butchers should respond to requests from customers for advice by recommending the old meat that you need to move quickly.

I suspect the hangers would actually be recommending old or slow-moving items. Sure, you can go to the website and vote — getting the customer engaged with the brand is a good thing, and that would reinforce the belief that the hangers reflect real data. Maybe somebody even looks at the votes, but I can’t think of a business reason why the hangers wouldn’t be displaying what the store wants them to display. Nobody goes to jail for hanger vote fraud.

Mark ThorsonMay 14, 2012 at 10:45 pm

Now that I think about it, it wasn’t just old meat. It was also meat that you had too much of. The book used the term surplus meat. That would apply in a clothing retail setting too. If you anticipate a trend and guess wrong, you can end up with too many of an item.